My two youngest children learned the origin story of Spider-man today. As endlessly redone as that story may be in popular media, it’s still a great story with a great lesson, and when it lands, it lands big.

I love these stories. I love that my children see these as true lessons, as their own modern parables that help guide their moral compasses. It’s a testament to the power of storytelling as well as the stories we choose to tell.

We owe it to the next generation to tell them good stories. It is, after all, our responsibility.

If a new object doesn’t improve your life significantly in the first few days of ownership, then you didn’t need it and it’s clutter. Make those decisions swiftly, or be buried.

A distraction requires two things: a void, and something to fill it. We so often focus on the “thing” that we miss the essential first component.

Did you open up your phone to check a notification, and then suddenly realize 45 minutes had passed? Sure, the flashing lights were distracting, but that ignores the fact that there was a desire in your brain. A need unfulfilled. Why was some new piece of content able to grab you like that?

We talk about the algorithm, how it learns our wants and fills them. But that’s because you starve yourself! Temptation only works on the discontent. What have you fed your hungry brain lately?

When my mind is racing with ideas, nothing can pull me from it. Ideas come from real depth – when I read a book, go for a walk, have an engaging conversation. They don’t spawn from two-minute bursts of color and sound.

Feed your head, people. Don’t try to shut out the distractions – replace them.

A course of action being reasonable does not mean you should be free of consequences for taking it.

Here’s an example: If I am walking with my child and they suddenly have a life-threatening allergic reaction, I will smash a store window to get an Epi-pen from inside. I will do this without hesitation, as it is a reasonable course of action if there’s no other way to save my child’s life. However, if the store owner later demands that I pay for the damages, I will of course comply. Just because my course of action was reasonable and necessary doesn’t mean that the cost of those actions should fall on someone else!

People sometimes get it in their heads that if the thing they did was justified, then that means they shouldn’t face any negative repercussions for it. That’s a silly, immature attitude. You are the captain of your soul, and the owner of your choices. You should make the right ones; you should also own the cost of doing so.

I think it’s a good idea to ask yourself, “what’s the best possible outcome I can expect?”

Things sometimes sound like a good idea, but we don’t take the time to figure out what the upper bound even is. Once we do, we can sometimes discover that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. It might be a good reward, but too little of it to be worth the cost and effort of obtaining it.

Knowing the best-case scenario also helps us evaluate how good we’re doing overall, on projects that don’t come to fruition all at once. If my garden can produce a theoretical maximum of one hundred tomatoes and I currently have 85 growing, then that’s pretty great! And maybe it’s not worth disrupting my operation to try to get a mere 15 more. But if I only grew 10 this season out of a potential 100, then it’s fine to try something radically different next season.

Nothing is destroyed, only changed. Things can be broken, but true destruction is remarkably rare and nearly impossible. You’ll always have scraps, and “scraps” is just another word for “parts.”

If you want to talk about something specific, it’s best to find people who want to talk about that thing and befriend them, rather than forcing your friends to talk about that thing. Obviously you can feel your friends out first, but if it’s a deep interest you want to explore at great length? Find a specialist. Keep your friends.

Of all the things to pack when you travel, don’t forget a stern stomach.

Being ready to solve a problem and being the kind of person who can solve problems are closely related, obviously. Part of preparing to solve individual problems is being the kind of person who is ready to accept that they might arrive.

I don’t need to prepare for everything that might happen. I just need to be ready to accept that solutions require changes. The most difficult part of overcoming obstacles is often trying to keep your original plan perfectly intact. Accept the impossibility of that, and focus simply on getting closer to your goal, and problems become much easier to solve – and thus you, much more prepared.